A great additional value of all service offerings occurs when we present our findings to your team. Our customers have told us that the feedback sessions become an education session that the entire team benefits from.
Listed here are just a few of our more popular service offerings:
Performance Health Check® for your z/OS System(s)
This exciting offering allows your installation to obtain performance Health Check® for your z/OS systems, sysplexes and I/O subsystems.
Your individual systems, sysplexes are evaluated by leading performance experts, and our deliverable to you is a written evaluation and set of recommendations. A resource analysis will be conducted of your processor, LPAR configuration, storage, and DASD I/O subsystem. This evaluation focuses on performance sensitive PARMLIB parameters, Workload Manager controls, sysplex and parallel sysplex configuration and controls, coupling facility and structure performance, XCF controls, base UNIX system Services and HFS setup, and more.
In the I/O subsystem arena these recommendations will identify logical volume and control unit load imbalances, DASD response time problems, along with appropriate recommendations needed to resolve them.
The deliverable for the base offering includes a written report, and an on-site or telephone conference calls to review our findings and recommendations. All past customers of this offering have expressed how helpful the Health Check® was, and how much their team learned during the process and follow-on review.
Contact us for detailed service descriptions, a sample analysis, scheduling and pricing information. We also let you know the data we need to perform the service.
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Vacation Coverage and Staff Assistance
Our customers find great value in this very popular offering.
Today, most installations are running lean and mean due to tight budgets or due to lack of permanent staffing opportunities. If this is true at your shop, we can help by backing up your staff. Do you need temporary coverage while a key staff member goes on vacation? Would it help members of your team if they had an additional resource to call upon to provide additional assistance during a project? Do you need temporary help alleviating a backlog in a specific support area? Then consider calling on us to provide you the help you need when you need it. Expert skills are available for a wide range of responsibilities and disciplines.
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Workload Manager Goal Mode Evaluation
Migrating to WLM goal mode was a big step for your installation, but the road to dynamic workload management does not stop there. But as the old saying goes 'the only thing that is constant is change'. Over time your workloads change, requirements change, and new workloads are introduced. On a regular basis installation performance analysts must re-visit and re-evaluate WLM goals over time. As new features of WLM are introduced installations must also be on the look out for new opportunities for dynamic workload management for their systems and sysplexes.
This very unique service offering provides an installation with a detailed evaluation of how well WLM is managing a system's workloads. What makes this offering so exceptional is that it does not just provide an evaluation of how well each workload in the system is doing relative to its goal. Instead, it also provides a detailed analysis of WLM's internal view of each workload's performance, the state of system resources, feedback on the decisions that WLM is making to manage workloads. You will have the opportunity to understand what actions WLM is and is not taking to manage your workloads. Provided with this analysis is an evaluation of goals and recommendations for improvements.
The true strength of this offering is our team's understanding of how WLM works and our unique set of reports.
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CICS Administration and Management
We provide a number of CICS related service offerings. Our staff possesses concentrated CICS and CICS application skill set and has worked with nearly every level of CICS and CICS Transaction Server.
Our CICS service offerings include:
- CICS subsystem performance Health Check®
- Language and language environment verification
- Application enablement and tuning
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DB2 DBA and System Programmer Services
We provide a number of DB2 related service offerings. Our staff has a high degree of expertise in the areas of DB2 database administration, database design, and DB2 subsystem performance.
Our DB2 services include:
- DB2 subsystem performance Health Check®
- SQL performance Health Check®
- Database Health Check
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UNIX System Services and e-business Performance Health Check®
Fact - The majority of all new workload growth on the z/Architecture (S/390) platform can be attributed in some way to UNIX and e-business.
Fact - Understanding just your 'MVS', CICS, TSO, DB2, IMS is no longer sufficient. To meet your service level objectives you now need to ensure optimal performance from your UNIX System Services environment, including your Hierarchical File System (HFS) configuration.
Fact - z/OS UNIX System Services and their associate workloads will be part of your z/Architecture (S/390) environment and consciousness from now on.
If your installation is depending on the performance of applications running in the UNIX System Services environment our UNIX System Services and e-business Performance Health Check® will provide great value to you.
Our experienced team of UNIX System Services (USS) and HFS performance experts, led by Peter Enrico, will evaluate your USS and HFS configuration for your systems and sysplexes. Our USS performance check up provides you with recommendations to help you gain optimal system and application performance. The product of this offering is not only a written evaluation of your USS configuration, but also recommendations designed to improve performance. A by-product of this offering is that your staff will gain a better understanding of this often-misunderstood environment.
We will also evaluate the performance of your HTTP Server, WebSphere Application Server (WAS), and your e-business configuration. We will provide you feedback to help you gain optimal e-business system and application performance.
Deliverables: Based on a review of your existing UNIX System Services and e-business configuration we will create a written report containing an evaluation of your environment and written recommendation designed to improve performance.
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WebSphere & HTTP Server Implementation and Verification
Together, the IBM HTTP Server (IHS) and the WebSphere Application Server (WAS) are the 'CICS or IMS of the 21st century'. That is, they are the newest subsystem through which most of your e-business transactions will flow.
Proper installation, configuration, and performance of these primary e-business components will be key to the success of your e-business strategy. As you may know, for success there are many areas to consider in addition to IHS and WebSphere. Such areas include LDAP, security, Logger, DB2, LE, JAVA, UNIX System Service, RRS, ARM, and more. You probably also have plans to web enable your CICS or IMS applications. Finally, there are the WebSphere client components you need to consider.
We have a variety of service offerings to help you ensure web-serving success. Such service offerings include:
- Installation and customization of your IHS and WAS configurations
- Installation verification of your IHS and/or WAS configuration.
- Performance Health Check® of your web serving environment
- Migration services if you are planning on migrating from WAS 3.5 Standard Edition to WAS 4.0 Enterprise Edition
- In-house seminars to help your teams understand web serving on z/OS, and all the new terms and components
- Offerings designed and customized to your needs
Consider contacting us to sound out your ideas and plans, and we can let you know how we can help. Deliverables: Customized according to your needs.
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IBM License Manager and Workload License Charges
The new Workload License Charges (WLC) and IBM's new License Manager (ILM) will have a significant impact on your software costs ($$$). Now you can pay for defined capacity rather than pay based on the size of the machine. But how does it all work? How will it affect your installation? What happens when you add the z/OS Intelligent Resource Director to the mix?
Let us help you to understand ILM and WLC and possible pricing scenarios. We can help educate you on this important change to software pricing and help you to understand how your installation will be affected. We can also help you to understand your possible pricing scenarios. We can evaluate your systems and sysplexes and help you develop a transition plan to WLC so you can start to realize savings to your software bills. We will help you to assess the impact of WLC to your installation and workloads. Savings to your software costs could be enormous, but you've got to do this right. Let us help you.
Deliverables: Customized according to your needs.
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Language Environment Health Check®
LE configuration and performance are probably the most ignored areas on most z/OS systems. Most of the IT staff do not even know what LE is. The biggest tragedy is that most installations don't know enough about LE or their LE configuration and run-time options to properly tune LE to gain back machine capacity and improve application performance. This offering is targeted to solve this problem in your installation.
Our LE Health Check® offering is divided into two primary objectives:
- We will review and document your installation's LE Setup and configuration.
- We will also analyze your LE Run-Time Options, and make recommendations geared towards improved LE performance and an enhanced LE configuration.
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